Congress Should Focus Supplemental Funding Bill on Real Border Solutions

Washington, DC – Reportedly, Senate discussions on supplemental funding have stalled around Republican demands to include policies that would further restrict asylum and the President’s humanitarian parole authority.  The Senate still plans to pass a large emergency spending bill to provide aid to specific efforts, and to improve border management.   The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) and the American Immigration Council issued this statement: 

AILA’s Executive Director Ben Johnson stated,

“Congress must press forward with funding the federal government to effectively and humanely manage border migration and to ensure all immigration agencies are serving the needs of American businesses and communities. The policy disagreements on asylum, while important, are distracting from the more urgent need to fund the needs at the border. To do that, Congress should increase capacity at ports of entry, add capacity to review asylum cases quickly and fairly, and plus-up support for cities receiving migrants -- among other parts of the White House Supplemental funding request. But the border can’t be addressed in isolation, and legislators should also fund agencies to improve processing for business and family visas and to reduce systemic backlogs at the immigration courts.”  

Jeremy Robbins, Executive Director of the American Immigration Council said,

"Congress has a role to play in fixing the government’s ability to manage the U.S./Mexico border and restore integrity to our system of humanitarian protection. In fact, without Congress doing more to fund processing at ports of entry; infrastructure to receive migrants; and efficient and fair resolution of asylum cases, future bottlenecks and panics at the border are guaranteed. That’s what makes it so frustrating that members of Congress are ignoring their duty to be part of the solution by instead insisting on sweeping changes to immigration law. Proposals that would eliminate or severely reduce access to asylum and parole would increase chaos at the border and make it harder for cases to get resolved – undermining the purpose of supplemental funding to restore the integrity of the system. While we strongly support bipartisan talks on immigration, negotiators must come to the table with a genuine goal of reaching consensus, rather than demanding unrealistic changes that would cause more chaos at the border and harm the most vulnerable." 

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For more information, contact the American Immigration Council: Brianna Dimas at [email protected] or 202-507-7557.